


So…what does happen to demons when they die?

by Zab43



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ligur Lives (Good Omens), M/M, Memory, POV Hastur (Good Omens), POV Ligur (Good Omens), Sad with a Happy Ending, Sadness, being dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26305000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zab43/pseuds/Zab43
Summary: So…what does happen to demons when they die?This is what Ligur was wondering when he regained consciousness after the incident at Crowley’s flat.I’m at it again…. I’ve just got to find a way to reunite these two
Relationships: Hastur/Ligur (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	So…what does happen to demons when they die?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to keep writing this theme until I stop feeling sad for poor Hastur

_So…what does happen to demons when they die?_

_This is what Ligur was wondering when he regained consciousness after the incident at Crowley’s flat. He remembered the pain and the dark and the sound of Hastur’s screams, then nothing. His immediate thought on waking was that he’d been discorporated, but something seemed different._

_This thought was followed by the conviction that he was not only discorporated but obliterated altogether. That would mean a holy weapon of some sort. He thought back, trying to recreate the sensations just before things had blinked out of existence. Nothing._

_Right, he’d assume he was dead then, properly dead. So how come he was awake? Although he was pretty sure he was awake he found, when he tried to open his eyes, that it was far too bright for him to see anything. He screwed them shut and listened instead._

…..

Hastur stared at the bath. It was now empty - Crowley had long since departed and that blessed angel had buggered off with the holy water. He wasn’t quite sure how the trick had been worked. He was sure it was a trick, demons - no matter how long they spent on earth and around angels - did not develop immunity to holy water.

Not that it really made any difference. A trick or a weird immunity didn’t change the fact that the traitorous demon was off limits. Hastur was not happy about that. Actually there were a whole heap of things he was unhappy about. Chief amongst the causes of his unhappiness was the death of Ligur.

Demons didn’t care. Demons didn’t love. Except….except… he did. He *had* rather. He didn’t now as there was no one to care about, no one to love, not any more.

He hadn’t left the courtroom since the execution had gone wrong. He hadn’t looked at anything apart from the bath, the empty bath.

He didn’t want to see anywhere else without Ligur and that’s what it would be - a corridor without Ligur, a room without Ligur, the whole of Hell was now Hell without Ligur. Hell without Ligur. That about summed it up. He closed his eyes, no point looking at things now there was no one worth looking at.

…..

_The silence wrapped around Ligur like a thick sheet of velvet. It was so quiet, and he was listening so intently, that he could hear his own heartbeat in his ears and his breathing was almost deafening. Try as he might there was nothing for him to hear beyond the sounds he himself had created. He assumed that if he was creating sounds then he certainly existed in some form. So far so good. Now what?_

_He had other senses and decided to try exploring with those. Firstly his sense of smell. Demons relied heavily on smell, each of them having their own distinctive scent. Except for Crawly… Crowley now, he remembered. The snake demon had taken up the human habit of washing and adding artificial scents to mask his own odour - the humans called them soaps, shampoo, aftershave, cologne or perfume, nasty stinky stuff._

_He took a big sniff of the air around him hoping to get a clue as to his whereabouts. The air was cold in his nostrils, very cold, which was odd as he himself felt perfectly comfortable with the temperature on his skin. The cold almost burned, but he continued sniffing, ignoring the pain._

_There was a faint aroma of something, something cold and clean. He couldn’t pin it down exactly, but remembered the scent from somewhere he’d been long ago._

…..

Hastur tried to remember Ligur in as much detail as possible. The shape of his body, the sound of his breathing, the noise he made just before he killed someone. The beating of his heart as he lay against him. The smell of his skin, the feel of his hands. It felt very real, but it wasn’t, and he knew it.

…..

_Giving up on identifying the smell Ligur decided to test another of his senses. Reaching out cautiously he tried to feel the surface he was sitting on. Nothing. His hand simply swept on downwards not hitting any solid surface. That was strange. He tried again, feeling upwards this time. Again there was nothing._

_He had a moment of panic. What if he’d been removed from the physical world altogether. He carefully put his hand up against his own chest. Phew! He did still exist physically then. Or, at least, his consciousness had kept sufficient memory of his shape that it was convincing him he still had a physical body._

_He put a hand to his mouth and nervously licked a finger. He tasted something. He couldn’t tell whether it was what he usually tasted of, because he had never tried tasting himself while he hadn’t been dead. He tried another experiment, biting his finger hard with one sharp canine, hoping to draw blood. Ouch, that blessed well hurt and, yup, it tasted of blood. He was still here then._

…..

Hastur bit his finger, a familiar coping mechanism, the pain and the taste of blood grounded him. He concentrated on the sensation, tuning out his other emotions. He couldn’t sit here forever, on the floor of the courtroom, staring at the bath. He needed to make a move sooner or later.

…..

_What other senses did he have at his disposal? He was at a bit of a loss. Ah yes, balance. He tried standing up. He wasn’t sure what he would stand on as there hadn’t been anything to feel, but he tried anyway and it seemed to work. He was upright._

_He took a step forward and had the sensation of falling forward into nothingness, tumbling endlessly, wind rushing against his ears. Then it stopped and he found he was seated again.Undaunted he tried again, and again fell at the first step, spinning helplessly before coming to rest on the same cushion of nothing as before._

_He tried opening his eyes again, but the light was still too bright. He tried to think of another sense he could use to test his environment, but came up blank. He swung his legs out and up and down still not hitting anything. He flung his arms wide out and twisted and turned wildly. Still nothing. He tried to crawl forwards, but again got the falling sensation for a while, before coming to rest against the nothing._

…..

Inside the courtroom Hastur stood and took a step forward. He immediately felt dizzy. The world seemed to spin and he sat back down abruptly. He tried again, swinging his arms to try to keep his balance. This time he managed to stay upright, but felt rooted to the spot.

…..

_Meanwhile in the middle of nothing Ligur had a new idea and yelled as loudly as he could. Not knowing what to shout about he started with expletives. His voice sounded loudly in his own ears, but it didn’t seem to carry any further. He yelled again, this time cursing Crowley for killing him. The sound still didn’t seem to travel._

…..

There had been a noise. Not the general screaming of souls in torment, not the usual sound of demons fighting, singing, shouting. Something else, something he recognised. Someone he recognised. Shouting, cursing, swearing: he knew that voice. Hastur closed his eyes and listened carefully, but the familiar sound had stopped.

…..

_Ligur stopped shouting. He’d run out of senses to try - he wasn’t hot, he wasn’t cold, he couldn’t see or hear anything, he couldn’t touch anything other than himself. He lay flat, although he didn’t know what he was meant to be lying on. Nothing happened for what seemed like a long while._

_It didn’t take too long before he wasn’t sure whether he was lying down, or if he had somehow ended up standing after the last fall. He spat to test which way the saliva would fall before remembering that he couldn’t see. He put a hand against his mouth and tried again. Nothing. The spit seemed to disappear as soon as it left his body._

_There was a sense of an immense empty space around him and he knew it was completely filled with nothing. He waited for something to happen, but it didn’t. He continued waiting, then waited a bit more and finally gave up waiting and yelled again for a while before settling back to wait again._

…..

He’d definitely heard the shouting this time and recognised it. It was Ligur. He knew that voice. No one else could yell like that. Lesser demons would shake at the sound, some would run and hide. The shouts meant Ligur was angry. Well, reasoned Hastur, he’d be angry if he was dead too. First Hell then death, it wasn’t fair.

Hastur stood for a long time listening for the shouting to start again. He couldn’t hear anything beyond the familiar discomforting sounds of Hell. He finally opened his eyes. The room was exactly as he remembered it.

An empty bath, empty thrones, empty rows of chairs for the non-existent demonic audience. Mainly it was empty of Ligur. At least this room had never existed while Ligur had been alive. He had never had a presence in it, so his absence from it hurt less. Outside, out in the deep dark pits of Hell, every space was now a space without Ligur in it.

He didn’t know what to do, where to go. How could he just carry on now? Why should he carry on anyway? Armageddon had failed, the Great Plan had turned out to be a nasty mean trick, there was nothing to look forward to any more. Hastur stood contemplating a never-ending existence in which nothing happened, there was nothing to look forward to and nothing to fill the emptiness, a vast expanse of nothing stretching on forever.

….

_Ligur had a sense of an enormous amount of time passing with no change to his condition. Was this what happened to demons when they died, they were destined to exist without senses, without stimulus, forever? Was this God’s idea to punish them further - after they were wiped out of existence there was still an eternity of pointless boredom to get through?_

_Getting fed up he remembered he had another sense he could try. Well, he wasn’t sure if it was a sense or just a thing, a thing in his head. It was his memory. He’d already tried to remember what had happened after arriving at Crowley’s flat and failed. However, what if he tried to remember earlier than that?_

_He thought backwards and rapidly got confused - memory seemed to work better forwards. So, what was the first thing he could remember?_

…..

In the courtroom Hastur stood still for a moment longer. Nothing had changed but suddenly he felt the urge to leave. Out there were all his memories of Ligur. Everything they had ever done together, every time they had sat and plotted to torment, kill or burn. Every time they had complained about the leaks, the stupidity of the other demons, the untrustworthiness of the angels, it had been out there. He couldn’t sit alone in the one place where Ligur had never been any longer.

Walking down the narrow corridor watching the lights flicker on and off he tried to think back to the first time he’d met Ligur. It wasn’t an easy memory to recall as it had been in heaven. She had tried to take all their memories from them when they’d fallen, but he’d held onto this. One single memory that he had desperately wanted and needed to keep. He held it close to his heart and coveted it, carefully nurturing the one bright speck in the blackness of his psyche. His secret, kept from Her, kept from the other demons, kept even from Ligur.

…..

_Ligur was surprised to find his earliest memory wasn’t of Hell. That was strange. Since The Fall, since he’d lost his grace and become a demon, he’d not been able to remember Heaven. Of course he knew in theory that he had been an angel. That he must have sung in the choir, or tended the plants in Eden or, for who could tell, maybe made the trees or the stars or the fish or the animals. Now, however, a memory came back._

…..

Hastur found his way to a dark room. He noted gloomily that it was a dark room with no Ligur in it, just as the corridor had been a corridor without him and the empty rooms he’d passed had also been empty of Ligur. He slammed the door wedging it shut with a broken chair before sitting on the floor, back resting against the wall. He closed his eyes and reached inside himself to take out his cherished memory, to relive it in all it’s glory.

It was light, very light, brighter than any other place Hastur could remember. It was the first day. The first of many. The light had only just been separated from the darkness and shaped into what was now called ‘day’. He wasn’t sure he liked it. It smelled funny, cold and clean, the frosty air hurt his nostrils. He screwed his eyes against the new light.

At this point Hastur started the memory again. He wanted to savour it, take in every tiny detail, relive it’s unique beauty. Enjoy the triumph of having kept this one memory safe from a vengeful god.

…..

_Ligur remembered it was light. A cold clean smell and so much light. It was the first day. The light had only just been separated from the darkness and shaped into the new thing called ‘day’. He didn’t really like it. It was too bright, too new, too clean. He wasn’t sure what had come before day, but he knew it hadn’t hurt his eyes like this._

…..

Hastur had wandered round looking at things in the light of the new day, seeing what Heaven looked like for the first time. Seeing for the first time. Before the day, before the light, there had been nothing to see. He couldn’t remember before the first day. The snatched memory preserved and cared for all these millennia started on the first day. He retained nothing before it and nothing afterwards, well until the fall.

Hastur shook his head. He mustn’t get sidetracked, mustn’t taint the precious saved memory with other details.

He’d wandered round looking at things in the light of the new day, seeing Heaven for the first time. There had been others, other angels, all doing the same. Blinking their newly formed eyes in the new light of the new day. There had been sound in the background, a gentle harmonious hum of sound. He wasn’t sure if the angels made the sound or if they responded to it. The sound was slightly dulled, it wasn’t the main part of his memory, just a background to it.

He walked around, looking at the other angels, looking at what seemed to be buildings and gates and walls. He didn’t recall how he suddenly knew his purpose, maybe he had been told, maybe the knowledge had just inserted itself. How he knew wasn’t part of the memory, the fact that he knew was all he retained.

He was to go through the gate to the space inside of the walls. There he would find new things, he would make new things. He followed the path he was ordained to take, winding lazily towards the gate. Once inside he remembered seeing Ligur. No, wait, there was more before that. Don’t waste a second of the memory, start it again.

…..

_He was sitting under a tree. Only at the time they weren’t called trees, or at least he didn’t know them as such. It was a new thing, a tall pretty thing that shaded him from the bright light of the day._

_It was green and soft and cool sat under the tree. He looked about. A long way from him was what looked like a gate in a wall. He wasn’t sure how he’d got to the tree, how he came to be sat under it, but he knew it was a good place to be, the place he was meant to be. Another angel approached._

_Suddenly the angel disappeared before his eyes. No, there he was, back by the gate in the wall, still walking towards him._

…..

Hastur had walked along the path from the gate. The ground under his feet was soft and green. The light still hurt his eyes. He was looking for shade, somewhere to sit away from the brightness of the light. He wasn’t sure what he had been called when he was an angel, but he knew that when he had got near to a shady spot under a thing now called a tree someone had called him by his angel name.

Looking down he had seen…. He had seen another angel whose name he could not remember. The angel had been clothed in shimmering robes, iridescence with colour, but somehow still white as well. All the colours so far created swirled and shone in that robe. The angel himself was dark, his hair and his skin in deep contrast to the shining whiteness of the white and colourful incandescence of his robes. His eyes though…. well his eyes had reflected colours, bright and clear, ever changing colours.

At this point he knew the angel had spoken his name and then told him his name too, but this part of the memory was missing. He didn’t know his own angel name and he didn’t know the other angel’s name. He did know that the angel would become Ligur. His Ligur. This was the first time they had met.

…..

_The other angel reached him at last. He seemed familiar, Ligur knew he should know him, but somehow couldn’t place him. Did he know any angels or were they all too new?_

_The other angel was tall and pale. His hair was golden and his robes white and shimmering. His eyes, however, were dark. Ligur looked into those eyes. He tried to speak to the new angel, call him by his name, a name he felt he ought to know, but he couldn’t remember it. That was weird._

_Ligur stopped his memory in it’s tracks. How could he forget his own name? His name was Ligur. Yes, that was right. His name was Ligur and the other angel was Hastur. His Hastur, only as an angel. How strange he looked. Standing there with golden ringlets and glowing white robes. So unlike how he remembered him in Hell. He had the same eyes though. Beautiful eyes. He gestured for Hastur to sit next to him._

…..

Hastur couldn’t bear the gaps in his treasured memory so he gave Ligur and himself their demon names. He inserted the new information into the memory as the angel spoke the forgotten names. “Hastur” said the seated angel, “I’m Ligur”. He took up Ligur’s offer of a seat next to him.

Together they had sat under the newly created tree, sheltering from the newly separated light through the length of the first day. As the darkness started to form around them something else new started to show itself. Above them, in what would become known as the sky, formed bright little pinpricks of light. Not as strong nor as harsh as the daylight. Hastur liked this new dim light.

The memory was nearly over, he deliberately slowed it down to savour every last moment of it. As the stars, as they would soon be called, rose in the night sky he reached out and touched the other angel’s hand.

…..

_Ligur felt something touch his hand. This was a touch from the outside. He opened his eyes. It was no longer too bright to see. It was dark, but the darkness wasn’t complete. There were pinpricks of light above him like stars in the night sky. He blinked looking around to see where he was. Was he in the garden under the tree with the other angel from his memory?_

…..

Hastur dragged out the last seconds of his memory. The sensation of touch, the slight warmth of the other’s hand, the scent of cool clean air. He turned to the other angel and looked into beautiful colourful eyes.

…..

_Ligur saw the other angel, somehow he had changed. His hair wasn’t in ringlets and his clothes weren’t white. However, his eyes were the same. The angel was still Hastur, his Hastur, sitting somewhere in the dark. Not in the garden, nor under a tree and the bright dots of starlight were gone too._

..…

Hastur opened his eyes and looked into beautiful colourful ones. The angel was gone. This was Ligur, his Ligur. Sat in the dark on the floor of a damp room in Hell.

Both demons jumped back, then leaned forwards. Their hands met again, just as they had done under the tree in Eden at the end of the first day. The day that neither of them had liked, that had been too bright for both of them.

The first day was long since over, the first night and the first stars long since passed, but Hastur’s first memory remained. The memory that had rescued Ligur from nothing and bought him back. It was no longer Hell without Ligur.


End file.
